Climate change is the most important issue of our time due to its potential to very seriously disrupt the life sustaining systems of planet Earth as well as its intersec-tions with other important challenges facing humanity. The United Nations Frame-work Convention on Climate Change is the key platform upon which the political process of international climate change politics takes place. The aim of this work is to produce an analysis of the role of transnational climate change advocacy networks in this political process and their internal power dynamics and thus contributing to the understanding of a crucial aspect of this political process. To advance this aim, this thesis engages with two objectives. First, a detailed ethnography is developed which serves to illustrate the political work of the environmental advocacy NGOs involved within this process, especially those that are members of Climate Action Network International (CAN-I). This approach is suitable to uncover the internal dynamics and structures of that NGO network as well as its complex and multi-layered relationships within the larger political configuration of the UNFCCC treaty process. Secondly, the investigation is advanced by analysing this ethnography through the lens of a critical theory of the public sphere. In particular, this analysis features more contemporary conceptualisations of the public sphere which stress the multiplicity of the public sphere concept including notions such as internal and external public spheres, counterpublics, and nested public spheres. Owing to this research design, the thesis has a degree of hybridity: it is expressly both an empirical thesis, with strong empirical flavour imparted by the focus on the detailed ethnographic account, as well a theoretical thesis offering an original contribution that is advanced throughout the thesis. The main theoretical thesis and contribution is that the theory of the public sphere is appropriate to analyse the political practice of civil society engagement on a transnational level if it is further developed to allow for greater degree of multiplicity and a broader conceptualisation of the notions of the “centre of authority” and the translation of the public opinion.

Within peacebuilding, there is a growing understanding of the need to develop a more robust understanding of the bottom up view of peacebuilding due to numerous failures to achieve the liberal peace over the years. There is a growing consensus that the liberal peace is insufficient to achieve sustainable peace in post conflict countries, but understandable uncertainty exists about how to achieve peace in post-liberal context. The thesis sets out to expand our understanding of what the experiences of everyday judicial hybridity in South Kivu can contribute to current peacebuilding approaches. By examining 104 different user narratives with various judicial service in South Kivu, DRC conducted between May 2014 and August 2014, this research tries to understand how individuals understand and navigate through the judicial landscape. This study concludes that justice is South Kivu judicial users desires for judicial experiences are not unique, but are contain universal characteristics. While there are opportunities to build upon what is working for users, the long term solutions for sustainable peace remain at the mercy of political solutions.

While large-scale studies of European anti-austerity movements exist, there is a need for in-depth, ‘thick description’ of anti-austerity activist cultures which explores the sustaining as well as motivating factors for political engagement. Furthermore, it is important to pay attention to differences, including gendered differences, within counterhegemonic movements to highlight the power imbalances that exist. This thesis utilises a cultural and affective approach combined with a gender lens to explore the lived and felt experiences of political participation and the gendered dimension of these. It contributes to developing a cultural and feminist approach to studying movements that takes account of emotion and gender by developing an in-depth understanding of a local anti-austerity activist culture. The research used a combination of qualitative research methods, including participant observation and semi-structured interviews with 30 anti-austerity activists in Nottingham. It reveals the central role of emotions in motivating and sustaining activism, uncovering the sustaining processes of solidarity and collective identity, and the importance of reasserting these in the face of an individualistic neoliberal capitalism. It identifies existing gendered barriers and exclusions to activism and ways of overcoming these, revealing that activism’s negative effects are gendered, with women feeling anxiety and guilt for not “doing enough” of the ‘right’ type of activism (direct action). This prioritising of direct action denigrates online activism, which is constructed as its opposition, underlined by the talking versus doing binary construction. Despite its supposedly abstract, universal character, it emerges that the ‘ideal perfect’ activist is the able-bodied male. The implications of this are explored, revealing the ‘dark side’ of activism which is hidden from public view. The thesis also identifies the construction of the ‘authentic’ activist who has the required lived experiences to be a ‘true’ activist, raising issues of representation. It therefore unravels the tensions between participants’ claim that “anyone and everyone can and should do” activism, and the constraints that prevent individuals from becoming politically active, including, problematically, how the ‘activist’ identity is constructed. The thesis highlights the importance of ‘care’ within the context of austerity, demonstrating the ‘retraditionalisation’ of gender roles and norms, with the redrawing of the public/private divide. In response, it explores how activism can be redefined as a form of degendered care, drawing on participants’ emphasis on empathy and universalist discourses. Overall, it contributes to social movement and feminist theory, as well as their overlap, by developing a cultural, affective, and feminist approach to studying social movements which takes account of gendered differences in activist experiences.

L'action éducative de la communauté d'agglomération Grenoble Alpes métropole se développe dans les quartiers défavorisés de l'agglomération, auprès des enfants et de leurs parents. La thèse analyse la fabrique quotidienne de cette politique publique, en questionnant les cadres cognitifs à l’œuvre, par l'observation des acteurs qui élaborent l'action. De prime abord, les pratiques observées donnent à voir une prépondérance de procédures de fonctionnement et d'outils et une absence de construction d'un sens politique. À partir d'une immersion au sein de l'institution métropolitaine et d'une méthodologie inductive, Manon Pesle décrypte la construction d'une vision du monde gestionnaire, celle que chaque acteur soutient pour faire fonctionner l'institution et ses instruments d'action publique dans un objectif d'efficacité. Les acteurs visent à rendre l'action réactive, rationnelle et performante. L'analyse révèle que ces principes d'action constituent une vision du monde portée et encadrée par l'institution métropolitaine, où deux matrices cognitives se développent : l'une individuelle et l'autre techniciste. Ces matrices irriguent l'institution, mais aussi les relations éducatives qui se développent avec les parents et les enfants. L'individu, qu'il soit agent métropolitain ou parent d'un enfant en difficulté d'un quartier défavorisé, est conduit à se responsabiliser face à son quotidien et à sa situation. La matrice techniciste s'ancre dans une idée de la modernité et du progrès, elle prône la croyance en l'outil dans l'efficacité et la performance. Pour autant, cette vision du monde, portée par les instruments d'action publique, n'est pas formulée et travaillée comme telle par les acteurs, fonctionnaires et élus qui, pris dans les contraintes inter-institutionnelles et politiques, l'entretiennent. Le pouvoir politique métropolitain polycentré et son leadership fondé sur la fonction de médiation ne parviennent pas à requalifier les enjeux techniques en enjeux politiques. La thèse donne à voir une politique éducative métropolitaine à qui il manque, non pas une mise en récit et en scène, mais un régime de vérité général qui soit maîtrisé par les acteurs de la métropole. / The educational policy of Grenoble Alpes Metropole (France) mainly deals with ‘educational achievement’ of the children living on the underprivileged areas. The thesis analyses the construction of this policy, by observing and questioning how people who set it up daily think and act. At first sight, we can see a supremacy of work procedures and policy instruments and a lack of political sense.From an immersion in the metropolis institution and an inductive methodology, Manon Pesle figures out how the educational action is based on an administrative perspective. This perspective is carried out by street level bureaucrats as elected members in order to make the metropolitan administration and its instruments more efficient. The analysis shows how the objective of efficiency is spread by the metropolitan institution, through two ideologies : one based on the individual and the other one on technique. Both of them drive all the practices and rules in the administration, but also the educational relationship with parents and children in the metropolitan programs of ‘educational achievement’. In one hand, individuals, as street level bureaucrats or underprivileged parents are asked to be responsible for their own situation. In the other hand, they must be competent and productive. These standpoints, carried out by policy instruments are not formulated and criticized by bureaucrats, elected members and social workers, as these ideologies structure their way of seeing their work and are embodied in the institutional rules. Finally, the educational issue, seen only as a technical question is not turn into a political question by the metropolitan political leaders.This thesis shows a metropolitan educational policy which is lacking, not political speeches or representation, but a same global way of seeing education mastered and assumed by all the metropolitan actors.